Coach Quotes Monday: Raheem Morris

Morris addressed the Bucs miscues that lead to a late field goal that caost the team it's second win of the season.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Raheem Morris addressed the media, Monday, after a disappointing loss, in which the Bucs had a one point lead with 1:14 remaining in the game but costly penalties and a pourous defense allowed the Dolphins to march down the field and kick a field goal to take a two point lead with just under five seconds remaining. Morris talked about the teams miscues…why the Bucs didn’t blitz more to create more pressure…whether or not Josh Freeman’s ball security concerns him.(On the positives and negatives in the Miami game)
“The positives were to be able to run the ball going into halftime, having 60 yards of rushing offense, where you want to be, what you want to do. Josh [Freeman]…we only had one conversion on third down and he ran for it, didn’t slide this week. So that was a positive on offense. We set up the two field goals on offense. It was a great chance to watch us handle the all-out on offense. There was a nice check down there, a nice crossing route to [Michael] Clayton that was a good job of handling the all-out. His red zone presence still remained the same. Kellen Winslow’s positive performance, a good game there was another positive for our offense. The throw to Mo [Stovall] under pressure was another really good job by the young quarterback. And having a goal-line touchdown run was another good positive sign. Negatively, the sack-fumbles. We’ve got to control, we’ve got to protect better. Those were just one-on-one, man-to-man matchups that we lost. The fumbled snaps, we’ve just got to clean that up – really two, because you had the drop on the shotgun snap. We only converted one third down before the half and it was a scramble. The three sacks in the first half, but to bounce back in the second half and to get some of that stuff cleaned up was pretty good. Defensively, talking about the positive stuff, the play, how hard they played. They continue to play hard. They got better. Quincy [Black]’s big interception. There were no big plays…there was one big pass play at the end there, in the last two minutes. But we limited big pass plays, which is what we want to do. Really, what you look at is you see five series of three-and-out plays by the defense and you’ve got two other series that were four-and-out. Of course, with the two big turnovers it was a pretty good day. Now, the stats didn’t say some of that stuff as far as the running game but really, objectively, you’re talking about the Wildcat run, a big missed tackle. That ended up being a pretty significant run and a pretty significant number on your run count. There were some other missed fits. They were good running backs, and that’s going to be a negative going right into the game when you’re talking about those two guys. And then the last thing was the two-minute defense, both at halftime and at the end of the game, obviously. We gave up 10 points in two-minute defense yesterday and that just can’t happen. The kicking game, stopping their returner was huge. That was big time. The field goals, obviously that has been harped on around here and that was a definite positive from yesterday. Having the confidence to go out there and kick from 50 yards felt pretty good. That was a sigh of relief. And another blocked kick by the starting left tackle. Donald Penn going in there and blocking a kick, that just talks about the character of this team. That just talks about how much these guys want to win, how much they believe in what they’re being told. I don’t know if there’s another starting left tackle on a PAT block team in the National Football League. That’s a credit to the guys we have here, that’s a credit to the guy coaching.”

(On the Michael Clayton play that was reversed by replay and if he has asked the league to review it)
“Every week you submit your questions to the NFL, like you guys all know. And they’ll give us back our answers; there’ll be no difference there. But for me, I just chose to control what I can control, and that’s not one of them. I’ve moved on. I made my mistake, I cost my team a loss yesterday, gave them a penalty, moved them seven yards closer and those guys went and scored. I’m done with it. I’ve got to grow up in that situation and get better. I can’t cuss at the official. Besides the point you can’t cuss at the official, I’ve got kids watching. I’ve got to control my anger in that situation a little bit as well.”

(On if he understands the ruling any better now)
“You know I can’t comment. Any comment is the wrong comment. No, I can’t control that so I’m not going to even try to. I’m going to coach the stuff that I can control this week, and the stuff that I can control is not fumbling the snap, not dropping a shotgun pass, not catching the ball in the back of the end zone, running the correct routes. Those things, I’m going to coach those things, and that’s where I’m at. That’s out of my control, that’s out of our team’s hands. That’s in the hands of the officials, they made their call and it is what it is. We’re done with it.”

(On Miami’s last drive in the two-minute situation)
“That was pretty clear. It was clear on the field. We called Tampa Two, you’ve got them backed up. You were a little nervous initially because of the penalty on Kellen because you don’t know where the ball is going to be. But the kickoff team did a great job pinning them down inside the 20. So now you can go back to your philosophy, which has been the philosophy around here for years, which is to get out of here with Bucs. You call Bucs, you call Tampa Two, and they hit the dig behind it. They get a little bit closer and they only need the field goal and they’ve got a pretty good field goal kicker so you’ve got to play a little more aggressive but you still want to have two high safeties. So you go with the two-man mentality and now you’re matched up and you get the big penalty on Geno [Hayes] and that moves them 15 yards closer. Now you’ve really got to play, you’ve got to stay with your mentality of being aggressive because you can’t let them hit a couple zones, hit a couple pockets. They’ve still got some time to do that and they can kick a long field goal and beat you. And then they hit that other pass on two man on the sideline, which was a stop-fade, which we should be able to play and we weren’t on that particular play. Great throw and catch by the two players. [Davone] Bess made a great catch. Their quarterback, seven, [Chad] Henne made a great throw and that was really the two-minute. Then after that they went into their run-the-ball, set-it-up, getin-position type of offense. We went to our put-everybody-up-in-the-box, try-to-stopthis- thing-because-you’ve-got-to-knock-them-back [defense]. You try to cause a fumble or do something and we got a mis-fit and that was one of their runs that broke out and got the running game stats all out of whack. That was what happened in the two-minute. It was on the 30-yard line and for that guy that’s almost a layup. You’ve got to try to do something and we did, had a mis-fit and [they ran] the most popular run in football right now, that belly-weak-bend bluff play that everybody runs – Atlanta, Carolina and obviously [Miami].”

(On how the dig play got behind the Bucs’ cover two defense)
“It was a Tampa Two; it’s not like you can’t get behind them. What happened was the play broke down as far as the quarterback being able to step up in the pocket, step to his right because we didn’t have a great pass rush or anybody to make him hold the ball. That was classic endings of Tampa Two back in the day when [Warren] Sapp gets up doing the Warren thing or Simeon [Rice] or somebody like that, where you want a DLineman to step up and be able to get a sack, make the clock tick, because it was initially good coverage. Once you break down the Tampa Two, you start to scramble around, you’ve got to do a thing we call plaster. We did not have the ability to plaster because he put a nice stick on him, a nice ball. We’ve got to be able to be back there and get him on the ground.”

(On why the Bucs didn’t blitz more to get pressure)
“When you play Dan Henning, that’s not the answer. He’s a max-pro passing team, and that means he’s going to leave in more bodies than you have, than you can send unless you go all-out. So either you go all-out or you play coverage and our choice yesterday was really to play coverage, and it worked on third down. Third down was a big-time stat for us yesterday, it’s where you want to be to play winning football. On third down we chose to play coverage and we were able to really stop them all day on third down and get off the field. Like I mentioned – the five three-and-outs, the other two four-and-outs, the two big turnovers. They just happened to hit a few big plays there in the two-minute at the end. You can’t blitz Dan Henning, that’s just the nature of the beast. He’s protection first, all day every day.”

(On the Ricky Williams’ run at the end on a common call)
“Actually, it’s not common; it’s the fad of the league. I’m saying it’s the fad of the league right now. It’s one of the better plays in football right now as far as running plays and it’s pretty productive. It was a hard key, but it was a mis-fit. It’s one that you’re ready for and one that you practiced. It’s one that – copycat league – everybody’s starting to do. But it’s still tough to fit even when you know it’s coming. It’s just one of those deals.”

(On if Josh Freeman has any ball security issues in the past that concern him)
“Not me, not at all. Yesterday the two sack-fumbles, anybody would have fumbled those balls. They were clean, blatant strips. Now the one he tried to scramble out, that was his fault. He’s got to put that ball away. But when a guy comes around clean he’s going to get that ball out. Josh Freeman, to his credit, his fourth-quarter efficiency you’re talking about the fourth-best quarterback in the National Football League, or something like that, and third in the NFC or something like that, slightly in front of Mr. [Peyton] Manning. That’s a credit to him. You’re talking about the fourth quarter, you’re talking about how quarterbacks are judged and that’s all a part of patience. The fumbles, the fumbled snaps, the couple miscues he had in the first half and throughout the game, that’s being patient with a young quarterback.”

(On why Freeman had the fumbled snaps)
“He just pulled his hands out too fast, too early. He’s got to do a better job of that.”

(On if Stylez G. White will play next Sunday)
“I think he’ll practice this week. I’m not sure where he is. I’ll have to see. I’ll update you more on Wednesday.”

(On Tanard Jackson)
“He is a good player. He is a really good player. He’s been that way since he’s been here. He’s been a splash player since he’s been here. When he gets the ball in his hands, he looks like a punt returner. He scores and finds a way to be around the ball. Yesterday I think he had nine tackles and a fumble recovery. He is a splash play type of player. He is always going to be around the football. He has been since I’ve been here. He has the ability to make a play on you. It’s been no different every week that he’s been out there playing.”

(On CB Derrick Roberson being put in for Elbert Mack)
“Actually he was coming off a kickoff that he covered and he couldn’t go. We had Roberson out there and Roberson was on Davone Bess. That was the play that they got us.”

(On if he was trying to get different personnel in there after the late timeout)
“We had a player come off the field who was hurt. The other time we were trading back and forth and that’s when Torrie [Cox] cramped up. We had to call timeout to get different people in there. Those are the different situations that you have to do. You can’t let them go down because of a cramp or something like that. You have to get the best people in there and all the people you need and go play football.”

(On if the team rode the emotional roller coaster too much)
“No question. I can’t ride the emotional roller coaster. It’s just something you disagree with and it’s over. I rode the emotional roller coaster and it was my fault. That whole situation was my fault. I have to be big enough and walk away from that guy.”

(On how it affects the team)
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it affects the team but I know it hurts the team. I can’t hurt my football team in any way. I can’t get my guys juiced up by me getting a penalty or getting a 15-yard flag trying to rally the troops. That’s not the conscious I have with me. It can only hurt the football team and it did. It got them seven yards closer and it gave them the ability to go in and score rather than holding them to a field goal that it might have.”

(On if the team was too high after the late touchdown)
“No. They got some good plays out of Miami. We were ready. We knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to go out there and play Bucs. If we couldn’t play Bucs anymore we wanted to go out there and play two-man. They just made better plays. They were able to win that football game. We set ourselves up for that situation after we got that 15-yarder kicking the ball off. We already know that all they needed was a field goal. Our kickoff team went out there and makes a big time play. That was a special play. We went out there on defense and went in there on defense and tried to get them in a normal situation behind the chains, where we want them. We just had to settle down and play coverage, settle down and rush, get home and win the game for you.”

(On Connor Barth)
“Pre-game, that was the place he was familiar with. He was out there in pregame and told Rich Bisaccia where he was good from. He told him which way he was good. I kind of went against the grain one time. I kind of just wanted to ride the hot man. We kicked into the wind, the 54-yarder. That was kind of a decision I kind of just pulled out and said, ‘Hey, make me look good.’ Good job by him yesterday. It was great. Right now I think he is 80 percent. If he makes one more kick he will be at 87 percent. That’s what you want every week. We’ll just let him go out there and let him keep getting opportunities. He has to seize an opportunity and went out there and took advantage of it yesterday.hree 50-yarders. I don’t know if I’m going to ask him to do that every week. But it’s sure nice to know that he can.”

(On if there was anything he could have done during those last two minutes to stop the Dolphins)
“I went through that all night. It’s one of those things where you say, ‘What can you do differently?’ The coverage I wouldn’t change. You want to play two men but maybe bring in a guy in two men. Some type of two man blitz or something like that. Realistically your guys versus their guys and you just want your guys to win in that situation. We just have to believe in that. We have to do that.”

(On what Ronde Barber meant by saying the little things were hurting the team)
“He is talking about tackling. He is talking about the missed tackle that turns into a 55 yard run. That’s little but at the end of the day it’s big things. You’re talking about being in the details of the coverage. I just used Ronde Barber because he brought it up. I’m talking about Ronde Barber rerouting a guy and jumping a guy on an option route and they hit a guy up the sideline and they are able to hit a field goal. I’m not calling Ronde Barber but that’s the little stuff that he’s talking about. He knows. He has to get himself more disciplined. I’m not taking away from what he did in the game because he played the deep ball great. What he did against Ted Ginn. They tried to hit a couple of deep balls on us and he was able to knock down a couple of big time throws, the first play of the game I believe. That was lights out football. Those type of things from everybody, they accumulate and come together. My penalty is just as big as Kellen’s penalty. It doesn’t matter. It’s a penalty and it kills your football team. It hurts you. No matter if you agree with the call or not, control what you can control. I can’t control that.”

(On the penalties)
“The first half yesterday was one of those things. It was a holding by a receiver. We jumped offsides with Kellen. It was just like, ‘Can you guys make this any harder on Josh Freeman?’ Those things happen. That’s what you have to clean up. Those are the little things on offense. Little things on defense, they are all over the place. We need to clean up the little things week by week. We are getting better, we are progressing and the team is really playing hard.”